Mark Abernethy: Double back

The meeting ended forty seconds later and Mac noticed the ONA guys sulking while the politicians smiled at him.

As Mac exited through the anteroom, Sandy Beech was still seated, talking on his mobile phone. The one Australian who was actually on the ground in East Timor was not going to be heard.

Davidson wasn’t in his office when Mac arrived slightly late. He was annoyed with himself – Davidson was not only Mac’s main mentor in the firm, he also shouted the best lunches of anyone in the RG Casey building.

‘Alan?’ asked the secretary.

‘Guilty,’ said Mac, taking the note she passed him.

It was a tasking: back to Jakarta, reporting to Greg Tobin in the Indonesian capital.

Breathing out, he tried to stop himself swearing. Only a few hours ago, the DDG was telling him to stick around, that he was needed during the East Timor crisis. Canberra had always seemed a little tame, but after the chat with Gleeson and the ONA briefing, Mac had glimpsed a fresh start to his career: getting back into the management end of the intel networks, golf at Federal, skiing at Thredbo, a few beers with the lads at Bruce when the Raiders were playing. It was how the office guys worked it and it had seemed within his grasp.

Collapsing on the sofa opposite the secretary’s desk, he punched a number into his phone then stared blankly at Davidson’s note as he waited for his boss to answer. He was tired and dreaded the thought of another fifteen hours in planes and airport lounges.

‘Tony, just got your note,’ he said when Davidson picked up.

‘I’m in a meeting, mate,’ said the West Australian.

‘Thought Gleeson wanted me around?’ Mac pushed.

Down the line it was obvious that Davidson was excusing himself from his present company.

‘Yeah, mate,’ said Davidson, slightly breathless, a few seconds later. ‘But Gleeson gets a call from McRae at National Assessments – they were at Sydney Uni law school together, right? – and McRae is going off his trolley.’

‘About me?’ said Mac.

‘ Yes about you!’ snapped Davidson. ‘What’s this shit about Wiranto being a misunderstood genius -’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘- a constitutionalist?! Shit, Macca.’

‘I thought they wanted my HUMINT,’ said Mac, referring to human intelligence of the type gleaned from interaction with people.

‘Yes, Macca – and fucking ONA have been carefully building a picture for the Prime Minister of Wiranto as a man who wants to be president and will inflict any atrocity on Timor to support that. And you walk in there and make him out to be some confused teenager -’

‘Actually, I said he was probably responsible for the militias in Timor,’ said Mac, not wanting to argue with his biggest supporter. ‘But Wiranto believes in constitutional government: he could have taken over when Soeharto was toppled, or launched coups when the riots started in Jakarta or when Habibie announced the East Timor ballot – but he didn’t. My point was the economic crisis puts him under pressure from his own generals to hold East Timor, that’s all.’

The sound of Tony Davidson sighing hissed out of the phone. ‘I happen to agree with you. But that’s not where the firm or National Assessments or even the government is headed right now, okay? Gleeson wants you back in the field.’

‘Jakarta?’ said Mac.

‘The section’s got something for you,’ said Davidson, referring to the intelligence section at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.

‘Pay rise perhaps?’ said Mac, but the line was already dead.

The driver gave him a sealed envelope as they came into Jakarta in the white Holden Commodore. The note said: Lunch 1300. Usual place. CR .

CR was Cedar Rail – the internal code name of ASIS’s Jakarta station chief, Greg Tobin, and the usual place was the only place they’d ever met in Jakarta. Mac didn’t mind Tobin as much as some spooks did, but he was hoping that his boss didn’t want to play cloak-and-dagger. He was too tired for that shit.

Mac got out of the Commodore in the heart of Mega Kunigan – Jakarta’s version of The City in London – and walked two blocks north to the JW Marriott. Casing one side of the street, he suddenly crossed at a green signal and stared at the window displays on the other side, checking the reflections. Jakarta was a town of violent surprises – a sort of Australian version of what Vienna had been for British intelligence in the Cold War.

Satisfied there were no tails, he got to the Marriott early and sat in the enormous lobby for ten minutes, reading the Jakarta Post. Even when Greg Tobin sailed through the marble-lined area with Anton Garvey in tow, Mac remained seated for a few minutes, looking for signs of surveillance: eyes peering over newspapers, reception staff suddenly picking up a phone, people whispering into their shirt cuffs. Mainly, Mac waited to see if anyone came through the main doors thirty seconds after Tobin, looking too innocent. That was always the giveaway – no one entering the Marriott was entirely innocent.

Seeing nothing suspicious, Mac threw the Post on a coffee table and sauntered through to the buffet restaurant, with its open kitchen and talkative cooks. Greg Tobin stood with a smile and shook Mac’s hand.

‘G’day, Macca,’ he said, with all the toothy charm of a politician. ‘How are you, old man? Not too serious I hope?’ He pointed at Mac’s face as he sat, a masculine look of feminine concern.

‘No worries, Greg,’ said Mac. ‘Just a scorch.’

‘I missed you, darling,’ said Anton Garvey, tanned and bull-like. ‘You don’t phone, you don’t write.’

‘Garvs, you old tart!’ said Mac, shaking the big paw. Anton Garvey had been in the same graduate intake as Mac, back in the early nineties. They’d become close friends very quickly, not least because they’d both been boarders at famous St Joseph’s schools: Garvey at Joeys in Sydney and Mac at Nudgee in Brisbane.

The three of them small-talked, each of them playing their roles. Tobin, a year older than the other two, saw himself as the going-places leader-of-men. The former crown prince of the St Lucia campus at UQ acted as if he ruled the world and was merely waiting for his business card to reflect it. Garvey was the corporate man – not spectacular enough for a starring role, but a reliable team guy who didn’t like too much divergence from authorised behaviour. Mac seemed to have become the ruthless loner, a description he had loved as a younger man but which, at thirty, was starting to isolate him; the events in Canberra had made him feel as if he were cast as a paramilitary rather than a whiteboard warrior.

They got through lunch and Tobin ordered another round of Tigers before leaning into Mac’s intimacy zone. ‘Got something I need you to do, Macca,’ he intoned with a perfect combination of authority and charm. ‘Special assignment.’

‘One of those management courses in Canberra, eh Greg?’ joked Mac.

‘Well,’ said Tobin, clearing his throat and swapping looks with Garvey, ‘not quite, old man.’

Looking around the restaurant, Mac saw foreign business people trying to shake money out of the tree that was Indonesia. ‘So what’s the gig?’

Stroking his tie, Tobin reached for his beer. ‘We’d like to get a better idea of what the Indons might be up to.’

‘Up to?’

‘Yes, Macca – in Timor.’

Mac could feel Garvs shifting his weight, uncomfortable.

‘What about Atkins?’ said Mac, assuming that the firm’s man in Denpasar, Martin Atkins, was the Timor guy.

‘Marty’s a controller now, mate,’ said Tobin. ‘He’ll be running you, actually.’

‘So we don’t have someone in Dili?’ said Mac.